Comedy features Colbert, Gable

"It Happened One Night," perhaps the first and best of Hollywood’s screwball comedies, brings laughs to the Red Barn Theater Film series Tuesday.

Starring Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable and directed by Frank Capra, this 1934 feature stunned everyone by garnering Oscars for Colbert, Gable and Capra, as well as Best Picture for Columbia and Best Writing for Robert Riskin.

Audiences were tired of the Great Depression by 1934 and were ready for some fun. "It Happened One Night" came out at just the right time. Film writers and directors would copy the plot a dozen times throughout the 1930s and 1940s.

Colbert plays the madcap heiress to the nines, as Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn would again and again. Gable is at his best as a recently fired newspaper reporter who stumbles upon a great story that could rescue his career. Colbert escapes her wealthy daddy, who has just had her impetuous marriage annulled. She hops on a cross-country bus, and Gable is aboard nursing a hangover.

Recognizing the girl on the lam, he helps her escape, hoping to turn her story into his meal ticket. You’ll recognize the story line from later films, but none of them brought such grit and attitude as this original.

The evening begins in the Tack Room Parlor at 6:30 p.m. with a show from television’s classic early days, followed by the main feature at 7 p.m. at the Red Barn, 3657 63rd St., Saugatuck. Suggested donation is $5 and $1 for concessions. Popcorn is free. Call (269) 857-5300 for more information or visit redbarnsaugatuck.com.